Adafruit CRICKIT for Circuit Playground Express

Sometimes we wonder if robotics engineers ever watch movies. If they did, they'd know that making robots into slaves always ends up in a robot rebellion. Why even go down that path? Here at Adafruit, we believe in making robots our friends!

So if you find yourself wanting a companion, consider the robot. They're fun to program, and you can get creative with decorations.

With that in mind, Adafruit designed Crickit - That's the Creative Robotics & Interactive Construction Kit. It's an add-on to our popular Circuit Playground Express that lets you #MakeRobotFriend using CircuitPython, MakeCode (coming soon), or Arduino.

Bolt on your Circuit Playground using the included stand-off bolts and start controlling motors, servos, solenoids. You also get signal pins, capacitive touch sensors, a NeoPixel driver and amplified speaker output. It complements & extends the Circuit Playground so you can still use all the goodies on the CPX, but now you have a robotics playground as well.

The Crickit is powered by seesaw, our I2C-to-whatever bridge firmware. So you only need to use two data pins to control the huge number of inputs and outputs on the Crickit. All those timers, PWMs, sensors are offloaded to the co-processor.

You get:

All are powered via 5V DC, so you can use any 5V-powered servos, DC motors, steppers, solenoids, relays etc. To keep things simple and safe, we don't support mixing voltages, so only 5V, not for use with 9V or 12V robotic components.

Please note this robot board does not require any soldering but you will need a power supply and a Circuit Playground Express to go along with the Crickit and these are not included! You can also use your favourite battery cage or battery with this 2.1mm plug to terminal adapter.

Since you'll be working with high-current devices, we wanted to have a good solid power supply system that minimizes risk of damage. The power supply has an 'eFuse' management chip that will automatically turn off if the voltage goes above 5.5V or below 3V and has over-current protection at 4A. Every motor driver has kick-back protection. We think this is a nice and durable board for robotics!

Alternatively, for portability we recommend using a battery cage with 4 x AAA rechargable NiMH batteries, as these hold a reasonably steady 1.2 volts until discharged. Note that alkaline batteries typically start at 1.5 volts i.e. four alkaline batteries will have too high a voltage and not work withthe Crickit.

Lots more details, schematics, specifications, and code examples in the (still in progress) Adafruit Learn guide.

Instructions for upgrading your Circuit Playground Express to the latest version of CircuitPython that supports the Crickit can be found here.

We also recommend that you update your Crickit's firmware when you get it - there's instructions for that here.

Product Dimensions: 85.0mm x 81.0mm x 14.7mm / 3.3" x 3.2" x 0.6"